Dialogue: The First Mansion

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to Turning to the Mystics. In this season, we are turning to St. Teresa of Avila, and Jim is leading us in Lexio using her book, The Interior Castle.

As Jim and I reflected on this season, we thought it would be helpful to include some more question and response sessions to support the Lexio practice. Currently, we are two mansions in, and we thought this would be a good time to reflect on some key themes and teachings. So, welcome, Jim.

James Finley (0:53)

Very good, yes, and I'd like to add to that by saying that, you know, these reflections that I'm sharing with you in these series of podcasts, I've been giving these talks on silent weekend contemplative retreats for the past 30 years.

These are silent retreats. At the end of each conference, it'd be on Teresa or Eckhart or somebody.

And there's questions, people ask questions. And they're deeply personal questions, but over the years, certain fundamental questions get asked over and over and over again. Because these mystical teachings raise questions relative to our customary ways of understanding things and how do I relate to this? How do I relate to that? How can I benefit from this? So that's the purpose of this session here, is to kind of hopefully tap into some of these very broad-based questions to make these teachings more accessible or more helpful to you. So that's kind of the logic of this time here together with Kirsten and hopefully you'll find it helpful.

Kirsten Oates (2:03)

Thanks, Jim.

I'll kick us off with our first question. What you've said is unique about the Interior Castle is that it lays out a path for us, a path of growth, of transformation, starting at the beginning. And a lot of mystics don't start right at the beginning.

But I wondered if you'd just describe, it's a path, what is the path? A path to what? A path of what? How would you describe it?

James Finley (2:32)

I'll put it this way. Let's say that what she's doing, and every mystic does this, they start out with a kind of a poetic metaphor that bears witness to what faith proclaims as an understanding of reality that's revealed through our faith.

And so for her, she starts out with a kind of a poetic understanding of the revelation that were created by God in the image and likeness of God. And an ongoing perpetual, like our God-given, godly identity. And so when she uses the word soul, she's referring to that identity. Our identity is this kind of the stature of the spiritual foundations of our deepest identity given to us by God as a person. And that's the soul. And then she says, I'm going to take you then on a kind of guided tour through your own soul.

Knowing that God, who's the creator of the soul, all about you, the universe cannot contain, is actually within you in the innermost center of your soul.

And so I'm going to be guiding you through your own soul into that intimate center where God's waiting for you there to grant you this union.

And she says, then you might ask me, well, how can you guide me through my own soul since I am my soul?

And she says, this is where the idea of mansions come in or dwelling places. She said, understand that there's different ways of understanding what it means to be in a place. So right now, you and I, Kirsten, we're talking, each of us is in the place we're in as we talk. And right now, everyone listening to it is in the place that they're listening to this. But the extent to which each of us is interiorly aware of this subject matter in a heartfelt way would vary greatly from person to person. So the mansions then refer to the degrees to which or the extent to which we're aware of and one with God creating us, God creating in our soul and God's image and likeness, dwelling in our soul and calling us into ever deeper union with himself, within ourself, within our soul. And so we're gonna start out at the very beginning with the very first awkward, first glimmers of spiritual consciousness. Like how the beginnings of religious conversion were for the first time God becomes real to you. Where God's relationship with you becomes intimately significant to you. And she starts there. How do we understand the status of the beginner? They say people in the first mansion, they pray, they do pray, but they don't pray well and they don't pray often. But it's a gift to be there. Because there's some people, she says, don't even know they have a soul. They're so externalized. So that's the gist of it. So she starts right at the very beginning, helping us understand the gift and the challenges of being a spiritual beginner as we first find our way into our own soul.